Drowning
by We Make Birds Sing
Summary: The story from the begining of L's life to the end - how'd he get to Wammy's? how'd he become a world class detective? did he ever have emotions?
1. Chapter 1

Waves crashed and roared twenty feet or so overhead. The sky was black and full of chain-mail grey clouds that every so often created a rumbling of thunder or a crack of ice blue lightning forks that seemed to be getting closer and closer to the tiny rowing boat nestled in its clutches. Any practiced sailor would have taken one look at the seemingly harmless, cloudy sky that had been present that morning and noticed the clouds were weighed down by rain, yet this crew weren't practiced. Upon the boat was a crew of five: a married couple that consisted of a twenty three year old Russian-French woman and her Japanese-English husband with their three children, twin four year old girls and a two year old boy. The family lived in England as the woman had moved there to escape her abusive father. The family was poor, but you didn't need money to be happy in her mind. She had her family, until the day of that storm. If only they hadn't taken that bloody boat out.

As the tiny boat was thrown about in the waves, the woman checked under the seats for life jackets. There was only three. In a mad panic, she pulled her daughters towards her and rammed the jackets over their heads, pulling the straps so tight the girls couldn't wriggle out of them. As she adjusted the straps, the boat was thrown up in another wave, spray crashing into the boat and soaking them. Rocking like a child's wooden horse, she had seconds to spare as she pulled the final life jacket onto her little boy, wishing they'd taught him how to swim. As she glanced over her children, letting a prayer softly haunt her thoughts, she considered how much she loved them as a wave threw the boat causing it to capsize. Immediately she lost sight of her husband, but as she clung to the boat she saw her daughters fighting the waves to get to the boat.

"Stop! Just lie still and let the waves carry you. You'll get to land eventually but you'll just tire if you fight it!" The woman yelled over the thunderous waves and cracks of thunder. She couldn't see her little boy which made her heart ache, but she could only pray that the jacket would keep him above water until he was found. Waves dragged over her head pulling her down into the frothing, painful water. Indigo swirls danced around her, dragging her down into the deep as her lungs burnt and her head felt heavy. As a blanket of indigo wrapped its way around her, she felt a strange warmth before she gave in and slept.

Above the waves, the three children were still hanging on to consciousness. The twin girls held hands as their free hands clung to the underside – well now the top side – of the boat. Their fingers were turning violet from the cold and their eyelids grew heavy without their mother's comforting words to stay awake as long as possible. As their legs grew cold and their brains confused, they fell asleep but it wasn't the end. Despite the lack of oxygen to their brains, they weren't destined to die that day. The twins were found by a lifeboat crew the next morning – unconscious and deadly ill but they would survive. They may have been destined to be geniuses like their brother but the lack of oxygen that they suffered from on that night left them both with mental retardations in different ways. Lucie came off from the event blind and with a mild cause of autism. She was smart, but because she was autistic she was never given the same chances her brother got. She was locked away with Lana, her twin, never being taught to read or write or learn Braille. Lana still had all of her senses in a way, but she heard music in her head and her short term memory was ruined. She always forgot her family was dead, and couldn't remember anything that happened before 24 hours prior. She could only remember before the accident.

Most would expect the toddler boy to have been the first to die, the worst injured as he couldn't swim. Yet, the boy was a sheltered genius. His mother had known from the day on which he was born that he was different. Yes, her daughters were amazingly clever for their age but her son, her son could have argued his point against a PHD student and won yet he was only two. As the boy bobbed amongst the waves, he didn't panic or struggle against the waves. When he fell under water he didn't try to breathe, he held the last breath he could have taken until he resurfaced. The boy was smart. Waves threw him around the sea but he didn't cry or panic, he just lay letting the waves carry him. Small and weak, the boy wasn't noticed by the lifeboat that scoped the area. He floated in the churning waves until he reached a part of the coast, 50 miles south of where he'd began. Oddly, the boy didn't feel any emotions as he dragged himself onto the beach. He didn't feel happy, scared, confused. After witnessing his parents die and with no idea where his elder sisters were, he'd shut off all emotions.

The boy spent nearly a week lying on that beach as it was winter – to be precise it was November of 1981. The sand was soft against his aching limbs but his stomach wretched and his head felt strange. It hurt him more than anything to draw shallow breaths but he knew oxygen would help his brain avoid any more injuries. He was still smart, but he'd taken a few blows. As he lay in the sand, unable to move, he considered what his next move was to be. How he would escape the certain death he'd obtain from that beach. In the end, he didn't need to plan anything.

On the eight day upon the beach, a young girl was taking a leisurely walk down the beach. The girl, Serendipity Harper, noticed the toddler lying in the sand, battered and bruised as if he'd been in a war all of his life. Shakily, she let out a breath which she hadn't known she'd been holding. Running as fast as she could, she finally made her way over to the tiny boy and made sure he was breathing before pulling her phone out of her pocket and dialling 999 for an ambulance. She had no idea what had happened as her powers of deduction were impaired by emotion cause by the state of the boy yet she had an inclination that he was injured else he'd have awoken.

When a woman dressed in a green polo shirt and black trousers hurried down a hill which had an ambulance situated at the top of it, Serendipity knew the boy was in good care. The paramedic carefully lifted the toddler from her arms and hurried up the hill muttering behind her that she'd contact the young girl in a few days with his progress. After that moment, Serendipity vanished. The boy would never see her again – not that he'd see anyone that he had known before again once he'd left that hospital. He'd become a new person: smarter, stronger, safer. He'd stop being Lawliet, the mummy's boy who depended on people to carry him and feed him. He'd become L – the strong man who solved mysteries and didn't let emotions get in the way. Loose your heart and you loose your head.


	2. Chapter 2

Mere moments had passed between the medics arriving on the beach and them deciding that they would fly the mysterious boy out to the nearest, large, children's hospital – Manchester. A helicopter, bright yellow in colour with black patterns and text, had landed upon the beach near Widnes. Its charcoal blades created a noise that would pierce the eardrums of anyone near yet the little boy didn't stir through the ruckus. Lost within the deepest recesses of his magnificent mind, who knows when he was to return from himself. Wind swept the raven locks around the boy's head as if they were a horrific halo represent his pain and his innocence in one greasy, salty mess. Everyone who took one small glance at the boy knew, knew there was something important about him. This one had to live.

If little Lawliet had been awake, he would have probably loved the helicopter ride. The views from so high up were nearly always spectacular, but when above some of the most beautiful lakes and mountain ranges in the country it's something else entirely. The emerald mountains and crystal blue waters held no interest for the pilot though. The storm the previous week had left horrible flying conditions and it was taking all his skill to keep the helicopter upright yet he couldn't keep it anywhere as near as stable as the team of medics would have liked. Speed was his priority though: they couldn't help the boy much in air. The blades churned up the swiftly blackening air making the pilot's job harder but he persisted until he recognised the city landscape beneath him. The flight had taken longer than he'd assumed, nearly three hours in total, but he trusted his crew to look after this captivating child.

Carefully guiding his machinery, he lowered the helicopter down onto the waiting pad at the top of the huge brown brick hospital. Waiting on the roof of the hospital was a huge team of paediatricians with a gurney for the little boy. As soon as the feet of the helicopter hit the metal pad the door had been flung open and the child carefully passed between cautious hands. His black hair fell softly against his face and his ashen skin stood out against the bright blue plastic sheet upon the gurney. Doctors carefully strapped him down as a dozen or so members of staff moved the boy back inside the hospital. Some of the staff from the helicopter felt sad to watch this boy go, but had taken note of his name to keep track of his progress.

Bright red alarms were being sounded throughout the hospital warning them that a kid needed immediate care. On the top floor, the strange child that had been scooped from the sea was laid into a bed and doctors hurried around him setting about the task of stabilising the boy. Wires and tubes seemed to embed themselves over every inch of his body yet they doubted the boy would ever even notice them. Nurses fussed around the boy yet after ten minutes, all fell still.

All conscious life had evacuated the room to let the tiny boy rest, yet the room was not silent. Saying that, sometimes silence is loudest. No, the room was haunted by the beeps of a heart monitor and the wheezing that was L's breathing. It was close to quiet, that much is assured as what was there to make much noise, yet the machinery rang through silence as if it were a knife through butter. Inside the little boy's head, his ears were ringing as if replicating the torturous thundering of the tremendous waves that battered him round the prior week. Even in his dreams the memory of what had happened found him. It would never leave him, even when he forgot the voices and faces of his family, he would remember the sound of their screams even if they were masked by the crashing of currents; things like that never go away.

Days passed by when the only change in life was the white bulb of the overhead lamp. Yet, on the third day a young nurse came back from sick leave. She'd been recovering from flu in fear that if she'd came in it'd spread around her ward like wild fire. Yet, when she came back she noticed this new boy. The woman felt a caring inside of her towards the kid so often sat telling him fairy stories when her shift was over or when she was not needed. Due to the boy's unstable state, whenever she wished to enter his room she had to wear a mask over her nose and mask as well as wearing gloves. No one could tell how the boy's immune system had survived so they were taking all precautions to keep him healthy.

Upon one day, when the sky was cotton candy pink and streaked with violet, the nurse sat, soaked in the golden light of the freshly risen sun. Her brown hair seemed more like auburn in this light and her green eyes were lit up. Carefully, she ran a gloved had across the toddler's arm, still feeling scared he'd crumble at her timid touch. He seemed to be getting a little colour back to his ashen skin, although she presumed he must have been snow skinned to begin with by how little difference there had been. She'd carefully bathed him a night before so his hair had lost its greasy nature and picked up a soft texture and fell to his shoulders in gentle waves. He looked more human than he had with his hair spiked all over and full of salt.

As the woman sat next to the boy, fixing up his fluids drip, she noticed his eyes twitching slightly – that kind of twitch you get when someone shines a torch in your eye after you've just woken up. The nurse figured the light overhead must have been bothering but she left it on as it was dragging the toddler out of his dream world and into reality.

The toddler, L, blinked a few times as the distorted world became clearer. He figured out he was in a hospital before he had even opened his eyes as the smell and noises were oh too familiar. He could feel pressure against his right hand, as if someone was clutching it for their own comfort rather than his own. It'd never be anyone from his own family he figured, seeing as he had no really knowledge of extended family and his sisters had tiny hands. No, this was probably a nurse who had attached herself to his unconscious self. As glanced down, his deductions were proven correct and he noticed the young woman start to speak…

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><p><strong>ANDisclamer:**

Okay just learnt how to do these! So I don't own deathnote, and this is my first story on fanfiction so it's not amazing. Eh, Review cause i really need the help if it's not direly obvious -_- XD  
>Emily x<p> 


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